8807results about "Picking devices" patented technology

An agricultural robot system and method of harvesting, pruning, culling, weeding, measuring and managing of agricultural crops. Uses autonomous and semi-autonomous robot(s) comprising machine-vision using cameras that identify and locate the fruit on each tree, points on a vine to prune, etc., or may be utilized in measuring agricultural parameters or aid in managing agricultural resources. The cameras may be coupled with an arm or other implement to allow views from inside the plant when performing the desired agricultural function. A robot moves through a field first to “map” the plant locations, number and size of fruit and approximate positions of fruit or map the cordons and canes of grape vines. Once the map is complete, a robot or server can create an action plan that a robot may implement. An action plan may comprise operations and data specifying the agricultural function to perform.

Agricultural operations by applying flexible manufacturing software, robotics and sensing techniques to agriculture. In manufacturing operations utilizing flexible machining and flexible assembly robots, work pieces flow through a fixed set of workstations on an assembly line. At different stations are located machine vision systems, laser based raster devices, radar, touch, photocell, and other methods of sensing; flexible robot armatures and the like are used to operate on them. This flexible agricultural automation turns that concept inside out, moving software programmable workstations through farm fields on mobile robots that can sense their environment and respond to it flexibly. The agricultural automation will make it possible for large scale farming to take up labor intensive farming practices which are currently only practical for small scale farming, improving land utilization efficiency, while lowering manpower costs dramatically.

The invention relates to an agricultural working machine (1), in particular a forage harvester (2), with at least one spout (4) for conveying received and processed crop (7) to a transport vehicle (6, 25), wherein an electro-optical device (18) is provided for the direction control of the spout (4) at least during the process of conveying to the transport vehicle (6, 25), and wherein the electro-optical device (18) detects characteristic parameters (30) of the spout (4) and characteristic parameters (30) of the transport vehicle (6) and/or the agricultural working machine (1). This ensures that a control of a spout (4) of agricultural working machines (1, 2) is provided which almost completely relieves the operator of the agricultural working machine (1, 2) of the task of monitoring the spout.

Embodiments of the invention comprise a system and method that enable robotic harvesting of agricultural crops. One approach for automating the harvesting of fresh fruits and vegetables is to use a robot comprising a machine-vision system containing rugged solid-state digital cameras to identify and locate the fruit on each tree, coupled with a picking system to perform the picking. In one embodiment of the invention a robot moves through a field first to “map” the field to determine plant locations, the number and size of fruit on the plants and the approximate positions of the fruit on each plant. A robot employed in this embodiment may comprise a GPS sensor to simplify the mapping process. At least one camera on at least one arm of a robot may be mounted in appropriately shaped protective enclosure so that a camera can be physically moved into the canopy of the plant if necessary to map fruit locations from inside the canopy. Once the map of the fruit is complete for a field, the robot can plan and implement an efficient picking plan for itself or another robot. In one embodiment of the invention, a scout robot or harvest robot determines a picking plan in advance of picking a tree. This may be done if the map is finished hours, days or weeks before a robot is scheduled to harvest, or if the picking plan algorithm selected requires significant computational time and cannot be implemented in “real time” by the harvesting robot as it is picking the field. If the picking algorithm selected is less computationally intense, the harvester may calculate the plan as it is harvesting. The system harvests according to the selected picking plan. The picking plan may be generated in the scout robot, harvest robot or on a server. Each of the elements in the system may be configured to communicate with each other using wireless communications technologies.

The invention provides seed and plants of the lettuce line designated PS 06518893. The invention thus relates to the plants, seeds and tissue cultures of lettuce line PS 06518893, and to methods for producing a lettuce plant produced by crossing a plant of lettuce line PS 06518893 with itself or with another lettuce plant, such as a plant of another line. The invention further relates to seeds and plants produced by such crossing. The invention further relates to parts of a plant of lettuce line PS 06518893, including the gametes of such plants.

The invention discloses a picking method and picking robot device aiming at fruits which are in size of an apple and is similar to a sphere. The picking robot device comprises a mechanical actuating device, control system hardware and control system software. The mechanical actuating device comprises a picking mechanical arm, an underactuated manipulator, an electric sliding table and an intelligent mobile platform, wherein the control system hardware comprises an IPC (industrial personal computer), a motion control card, a data acquisition card, an AHRS (attitude and heading reference system), a coder, a monocular camera, a binocular camera, a force sensor, a slipping sensor and the like. During operation, the IPC fuses information of the coder, the AHRS, monocular camera components and an ultrasonic sensor to enable the mobile platform to independently navigate and avoid obstacles. A binocular vision system collects images of mature fruits and obstacles and extracts the characteristics of the images so as to realize obstacle avoidance of the mechanical arm and fruit positioning. Finally, the IPC fuses the information of the force sensor, the slipping sensor and the position sensor, thereby further reliably gripping the mature fruits and separating the fruits from fruit branches.

The invention discloses an automatic-navigation crawler-type mobile fruit picking robot which comprises a mechanical execution system and a control system and is characterized in that the mechanical execution system comprises an intelligent movable platform, a fruit picking mechanical arm and a two-finger type manipulator, wherein the intelligent movable platform comprises two crawler assemblies, an experimental facility fixing rack, a supporting stand column, a cross beam, a speed reducer and the like; and the control system comprises an industrial personal computer, a motion control card, a data collecting card, an image collecting card, an encoder, a GPS (global position system), a monocular zooming camera assembly, a binocular camera, a laser ranging sensor, a control circuit and the like. The automatic-navigation crawler-type mobile fruit picking robot integrates the fruit picking mechanical arm, the two-finger type manipulator, the intelligent movable platform and the sensor system, integrates multiple key technologies such as fruit identification, motion of the picking mechanical arm, grabbing of a tail-end executer, automatic navigation and obstacle avoidance of the movable platform, and the like, and really realizes automatic and humanized fruit picking.

The present invention relates to picking robot technology, and is especially one kind of linear motor driven terminal executor of picking robot. The linear motor driven terminal executor consists of fingers, link rod and crank, gears, linear motor, air bag, push plate, casing, vacuum generator, sucking disc, fixing clip and other parts. The mover of the linear motor moves linearly to drive the sucking disc back and forth for sucking the fruit, to make the fingers open or close to hold the fruit via the transmission of the gears, crack and the four-rod mechanism, and to drive the push plate forwards for compressing the air bag to blow out leaves and facilitating picking. The present invention needs only one motor, and has compact structure, high precision and smooth and reliable motion.

An autonomous navigation and man-machine coordination picking operating system of a picking robot comprises a travelling unit of the picking robot, a picking robot arm, an Agent, a wireless sensor network, a computer and a panoramic stereoscopic visual sensor. The Agent has functions of autonomous navigation, obstacle avoidance, positioning and path planning and the like, the wireless sensor network is used for completing man-machine coordination picking information interaction, the computer is used for providing long-distance intervention and management for picking administrators during man-machine coordination picking operation, and the panoramic stereoscopic visual sensor is used for acquiring panoramic stereoscopic video images in a picking area. The autonomous navigation and man-machine coordination picking operating system of the picking robot is fine in natural flexibility, simple in mechanism, low in control complexity, limited intelligent, high in picking efficiency, fine in environmental adaptation, and low in manufacturing and maintenance costs., Picking objects and crop are not damaged during picking.

The invention provides a transgenic soybean event MON 87708 plant and plants, plant cells, seeds, plant parts, and commodity products derived from event MON 87708. The invention also provides polynucleotides specific for event MON 87708 and plants, plant cells, seeds, plant parts, and commodity products comprising polynucleotides specific for event MON 87708. The invention also provides methods related to event MON 87708.

The invention discloses a double-manipulator fruit and vegetable harvesting robot system and a fruit and vegetable harvesting robot method of the double-manipulator fruit and vegetable harvesting robot system. According to the system, a binocular stereoscopic vision system is used for visual navigation of walking motion of a robot and obtaining of position information of harvested targets and barriers; a manipulator device is used for grasping and separating according to the positions of the harvested targets and the barriers; a robot movement platform is used for autonomous moving under the operation environment; a main control computer is a control center, integrates a control interface and all software modules, and controls the whole system. The binocular stereoscopic vision system comprises two color vidicons, an image collection card and an intelligent control cloud deck; the manipulator device comprises two five degree-of-freedom manipulator bodies, a joint servo driver, an actuator motor and the like; the robot movement platform comprises a wheel-type body, a power source and power control device and a fruit and vegetable harvesting device. Binocular vision and the double-manipulator bionic personification are used for building the fruit and vegetable harvesting robot, and autonomous navigation walking and automatic harvesting of the fruit and vegetable targets are achieved.

The present invention relates to a method for controlling pathogen growth on live plants and mushrooms using UV-C light and an apparatus for use in the method. Also provided are methods for removing surplus leaves and methods for destroying aerial plant parts prior to harvest of underground roots, tubers or bulbs.

The invention relates to an articulated flexible manipulator which belongs to the technical field of the robots and the electromechanical integration. The manipulator is provided with three skillful fingers which are respectively arranged on three jaws of a three-jaw chuck, and the three skillful fingers produce chucking force by the function of fluid driving expansion muscle; each skillful fingeris provided with single artificial expansion muscle and a plurality of articulations with single degree of freedom, the artificial expansion muscle is flexible, axially-expandable, each smart fingeris assembled with a hinge framework or flexible hinge framework through the expansion muscle, the smart finger comprising a plurality of articulations with single degree of freedom is designed; the flexibility of the single expansion muscle and the structure of the articulations can realize the flexibility of the degree of freedom and the buffer of the chucking force, the skillful fingers have thecharacteristics of degree flexibility of freedom and chucking force buffer; and the manipulator is applied to chuck breakable brittle bodies and special bodies with shape and size change.

The invention relates to an end effector of a fruit and vegetable picking robot. The end effector mainly consists of a clamping system, a cutting system and a sensor system. The clamping system mainly adopts a mechanism formed by cylinder sliding chutes to drive two fingers to open and close, thus realizing the action of grasping apples; the cutting system adopts a DC motor with 12V as the power source to drive blades to rotate nearly a circle around the fingers by the transmission of steel wires or the transmission of steel wire trolley wheels, thus cutting apple stems at any position along the circumferential direction of the fingers; the sensor system consists of an opto-electrical position switch, a pressure sensor, a micro-vision sensor, a touch sensor and a limit switch and plays a role of connecting motions and controlling the process during the process of clamping and cutting the apple stems. The end effector has a simple and reliable picking way, good commonality, low control difficulty, low cost, which ensures an intelligentized picking, thus meeting the demands of a football-like fruit picking robot and being conducive to realizing the practical utilization and commercialization of fruit picking robots.

A control system for an engineless, motor-driven lawnmower vehicle includes electric motors and controllers. At least one of the electric motors is an electric drive motor connected to a drive wheel of the lawnmower vehicle to enable transmission of motive power. At least one other electric motor is a mower-related electric motor connected to a lawnmower rotary tool to enable transmission of motive power. At least one of the controllers is a drive wheel controller which includes a drive wheel driver and which controls operation of the electric drive motor in response to a signal from at least one operator sensor for detecting an operation amount of at least one operator. At least one controller controls to activate or stop the mower-related electric motor. At least one controller is connected to the drive wheel controller and transmits a control signal thereto in response to a signal from the operator sensor.

The invention discloses an end effector of a ball-like fruit picking robot. The end effector comprises a rotating machine assembly, a telescopic cylinder assembly and an arc-shaped finger cutting assembly. The end effector has the following advantages: a rotating machine is utilized to drive four arc-shaped blades to cut the fruit stem in any position between the four arc-shaped blades in a rotating manner via a coupling shaft assembly, thus omitting detection of the position of the fruit stem; a single-rod double-action cylinder drives four arc-shaped fingers to unfold and fold by way of extension and retraction of a piston rod; the space formed when the four arc-shaped fingers are folded is larger than the three-dimensional space of the fruits; the fingers are not contacted with the fruits during picking, thus ensuring that the fingers can rotate relative to the fruits, providing conditions for the arc-shaped blades to cut the fruit stems in a rotating manner and dispensing with complex pressure control for clamping the fruits; and the end effector has a reliable picking mode, low action control difficulty, low cost and strong universality.

An arrangement for controlling the height above or depth below an irregular surface of a body moving over or below the surface includes a rotation sensor coupled to a controller responsive to an angular deflection signal output by the rotation sensor. The rotation sensor and controller are mounted to a vehicle moving over the surface such as an agricultural vehicle traversing a field. A semi-rigid, flexible arm has a first end coupled to the rotation sensor with a ground engaging member attached to a second opposed end of the arm. In one embodiment, the flexible arm includes an elongated coil spring attached to a rigid shaft and the ground engaging member is a spherical ball attached to the shaft's distal end. The coil spring is pre-loaded to a selected bending or flexure force and permits the ground engaging member to impact obstructions in the field without damage to the rotation sensor. The coil spring also prevents damage to the rotation sensor when the vehicle is reversed in direction. The flexible arm may be urged downwardly to ensure that the ground engaging member contacts the soil and upward and downward rotation stops may be provided to limit rotation of the rotation sensor and flexible arm combination. When a plurality of rotation sensors and flexible arms are employed such as along the length of a combine header, each rotation sensor may be individually calibrated by rotating the sensor relative to the head unit to which it is mounted to permit all sensors to uniformly measure the height above or depth below the soil surface.

A battery-operated mower is described that includes a chassis supporting a first drive wheel and a second drive wheel, a battery pack, a first electric drive wheel motor interconnected to the first drive wheel and second electric drive wheel motor interconnected to the second drive wheel; one or more electric blade motors; an electric cooling fan in fluid communication with at least one of the first electric drive wheel motor and second electric drive wheel motor; one or more controllers for controlling the rotational speed of the first electric drive wheel motor, the second electric drive wheel motor, and the blade motors; and a left control actuator in communication with a first throttle sensor and a right control actuator in communication with a second throttle sensor, wherein the first throttle sensor and second throttle sensor are in communication with the one or more controllers.